Increasing the activity of two enzymes better known for their role in oxidative stress metabolism turns normally relaxed mice into "Nervous Nellies," according to research conducted at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and reported in the early online edition of Nature.

The above concepts had been broadly outlined by about the middle of the 1950's, but the exact mechanisms by which electron transport is coupled to ATP synthesis in oxidative and photosynthetic phosphorylation remained unknown.

A requisite for the establishment of a proton gradient is, of course, that the membrane itself is impermeable to protons, which explains the need for an intact membrane structure in oxidative and photosynthetic phosphorylation.